Thanksgiving sides: homemade biscuits, roasted pecans, and spice cake for dessert.

Thanksgiving sides: homemade biscuits, roasted pecans (from South Carolina), and spice cake for dessert., originally uploaded by colmmcsky.

All hail the beaten biscuits produced by many a generation of Texas cooks. They are fluffy and crumbly and delicious.

I also roasted some pecans to put on everything. In the back is a spice cake covered in chocolate frosting.

The best Thanksgiving food, borscht!

The best Thanksgiving food, borscht!, originally uploaded by colmmcsky.

Pardon me for a moment-

HELL YES BORSCHT! ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!

I'm immensely pleased with myself. Roasting short ribs gave me meat for the borscht as well as bones for making the beef stock base. I roasted several chopped beets and chopped them even further. One giant beet was chopped raw along with the potatoes. I pan fried the cabbage and onions in butter. It burbled away all yesterday and through this morning to produce this rich, crimson soup.

My dollop of sour cream makes this perfect. This will be the best part of the day.

movie catch up

The Harry Potter feast the other night was masterful. The Alamo South Lamar's new chef is really a bad ass. The movie was fair, much more emotionally engaging than the last one and full of odd surprises. (The amazing animated sequence, the Ministry scenes, that terrifying snake, the Nick Cave dance.) It feels rough to wait so long for the next one, like your emotional energy might collapse in the meanwhile. But I'm glad I saw it.

The Malfoy home seems much like I always imagined it to be. Oh Malfoys.

The night before that we saw Buster Keaton's The Cameraman with a live score by Bee Vs Moth. It was superb and fun. Having the live performance added quite an engaging element. Buster Keaton was fantastic. I had no idea, and it shames me to admit I've never seen any of his stuff. But it was so good and they did so many lovely and excellent things I didn't even imagine were possible at that time. It was a lot of fun and the theater was packed.

We watched Inglourious Basterds today because the in-laws wanted to watch something on Blu-ray on our television. (Trust me, the other choices were no more holiday related.) So that was fun. I enjoy that movie more each time I see it. I kind of want fanfic of Shoshanna and Marcel. Or just more Hugo Stiglitz killing Nazis.